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The church is great here! The youth seem very supportive of each other, the wards are very kind when people are struggling, etc.

Not sure about ward shopping. To be frank, I don’t depend on the ward for much other than the sacrament, so I don’t worry about it much. The only issue would be if the kids were horrible to my kids or something.

My recommendation is to rent for six months, decide what you want to do and make an informed decision. The commute is miserable here, so you definitely want to live close to work and you want time to make a good housing decision.

No idea about whether home prices will drop but homes are selling within 1 week, waiving inspection, etc. It’s crazy again.

Housing keeps going up and up, and the inventory of both rentals and sale homes is short, and are on and off the market quickly. If you have a family and kids, I recommend looking to the Eastside if you can, Redmond, Kirkland, Issaquah, or if you can afford it, Sammamaish. Bellevue is going through what Seattle did a generation ago with aging families, few youth, and lots of young couples living in apartments while they look for a home to afford.

I would avoid Seattle, even though the schools are in some cases good, but they are continually in financial deficit, and seem unable to manage the sheer size of a very large district.

The South Sound is less expensive, but commutes are awful from Renton, Kent, or Auburn. West Seattle seems more family friendly, but if you work on the Eastside, the commute can become problematic. Whatever you do, look hard at the commute time to your work from your perspective residence.

My experience with church is that wards are mostly all pretty tolerant of what I would call big-tent Mormonism, especially in Seattle, but even the more conservative wards are still pretty diverse, and nothing like Utah County. And apart from rainy gray winters, the climate is pretty nice, with summer usually lasting well into October, and the mountains, Puget Sound, and forests all within an easy drive from wherever you live.

In Seattle, it is all about where work is for you. The commute would be the number one thing. There are great wards and wards that are struggling from Lynnwood to Federal Way, from West Seattle to Issaquah. I live in Auburn, commute to Bellevue for my job at Microsoft. It is a challenge, but we wanted something rural, with an acre and room to grow. But the cost for that is my commute, and it can be brutal.

They shrunk our stake from ten wards to eight 15 years ago. It was hard for us, because they split our ward, and we had alot of friends that we weren’t seeing anymore. But, upon reflection, we blessed the new ward with strong scout leaders, with great choir leadership, and turned a priests quorum from two into twelve active. Your family might be needed in a ward to make a difference.

Our ward has had alot of people moving out in the last year. Boeing jobs moving out of state, empty nesters moving to be closer to grandkids, and families aging with kids moving on to college, missions and marriage. Rent has been going up like crazy, because vacancy rates are so low. $900 a month turns into $1300 a month, so people are looking further south, like Puyallup and Graham who are renters. We are praying for members to move into our ward right now, we need them to continue to have the vibrant ward we’ve enjoyed for so long.

Magnolia is a nice area, and Aaron Brown lives there. Pricey, but nice if you can afford it. Tough commute to the eastide if you work for Microsoft, but not too bad if you are working in downtown Seattle. Like Adam says, it is all about the commute.